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Cine Designer + C4D FAQ

Is there a student or demo version?

Right now we do not offer a free demo or student version. We would like to explore this in the future.

If you are a film student at AFI, USC, Tisch, etc. contact the head of your department and tell them that you’d like to learn Cine Designer. We will be reaching out to film schools in the near future and if they already know that there is an interest from the students, we will be able to get you free student versions faster.

Do I Have To Pay for Updates / Additions?

Cine Designer Core
When you buy Cine Designer + C4D (the plugin) you are buying the CORE version. This CORE will be getting free updates and additions on a regular basis. The goal is get the majority of the “standard film equipment” into the CORE version. You will receive emails when there is a new build of core available to download.

Paid Extension Libraries
There will also be paid extension libraries of equipment like motion control cranes, camera cars, borescope/snorkel lenses, etc. The extension libraries will work with the existing core library. Each library will be updated and added to over time and you will be notified via email when there is a build to download.

Frequently Asked Question – Cinema 4D

Will Cinema 4D run on my system?

The safest thing to do is download the free Cinema 4D trial on your computer and test it out. Cine Designer doesn’t require a workstation or uber computer to run efficiently. A Macbook Pro or iMac will work very well.

Does Cine Designer work in Cinema 4D Lite (Cineware)?

No. Adobe After Effects CC ships with a free version of Cinema 4D called Cinema 4D Lite with a plugin called Cineware. Unfortunately Cine Designer DOES NOT work in Cinema 4D Lite, we wish it did, trust me.

What about Cinema 4D Classroom / Educational / Non Commercial?

Yes! If you are a student or educator and you have a legit student email address, you can get Cinema 4D “Classroom” for FREE. Cine Designer will work in this free non commercial version of Cinema 4D!

Does Cine Designer work with the Cinema 4D Free Demo?

Yes! But you won’t be able to save or render over a certain size. But if you wanted to buy Cine Designer and then use the trial only, you could do that. Not really recommended, but you could do it.

How much does a commercial version of Cinema 4D Cost?

LightingCaustics and IES Lights are only supported in C4D Visualize and Studio. This isn’t a big deal at all. Caustics allow you to simulate light passing through glass/water and IES lights are manufacturer profiles that represent real world lights.

RenderingPhysical Renderer aka Depth of Field is only supported in C4D Broadcast, Visualize, and Studio. You will need Physical Renderer if you want to have Depth of Field in your render or Motion Blur. I consider DOFs very important, but it isn’t required for Cinematography Design.

SketchUp ImporterSketchUp’s 3D Warehouse is one of the best reasons to use Cinema 4D. We have access to millions of free 3D models and in Cinema 4D R17 Visualize and Studio you can import them seamlessly. Watch this video to see the workflow. HERE!

Content Pack
Each version of Cinema 4D comes with a DIFFERENT library of amazing 3D assets including humans, props, room builders, buildings, etc. Studio has some amazing 3D characters and Visualize has some great room building assets and props.

PLEASE read the Maxon product comparison chart

What versions of Cinema 4D does Cine Designer support?

Cinema 4D R17 Mac and Windows

Do you support Third Party Renderers like Octane, V-Ray, Arnold, etc.

No. Cine Designer right now only officially supports Cinema 4D “Standard” and “Physical” renderer. This is by design. We want the broadest group of customers to be able to successfully visualize lighting. So Prime users will use “Standard” and everyone else will likely use “Physical.” Both are excellent solutions.

Octane
Our unofficial first integration will be with Octane. Octane currently relies on having one or multiple NVIDIA GPUs that enable insanely fast, almost real time, rendering. This is very intriguing and we want to offer real time lighting to our users. However, Octane will require the follow for users:

Octane:
Requires a separate purchase of Octane Render
Requires an NVIDIA GPU or several for it to be worth it
Requires a separate build of R1 assets with Octane Shaders, Octane tags, etc.
Requires a new learning curve for Cinema 4D users
Introduces compatibility issues with Cinema Release numbers and Octane releases. In other words this gets harder to support.

Arnold
Arnold is our favorite third party renderer currently. It is stable,fast, simple to use, and it closely models real world photography principals. It will enable users to simulate diffusion semi-accurately and it is quickly becoming the VFX industry standard. The new Arnold interactive viewport is very usable for real time renders as well, but it’s not GPU accelerated at the moment.

V-Ray
V-Ray is the Architecture Visualization and Car rendering gold standard. Chaos Group has an enormous community and there are millions of 3D model libraries that allow you to purchase off the shelf ready to render scenes/assets. However, we are not fans of the “complexity” of the system. We value software that closely models real world photography like Arnold. We do not anticipate supporting V-Ray in the near future, although V-Ray RT is very compelling.

Can you make Cine Designer for Maya, 3DS Max, XSI, Modo, or Blender?

Our goal has always been to create a workflow and solution for cinematographers to quickly and accurately visualize real world based cinematography. We actually developed an entire plug-in for Autodesk Maya with the VFX/Previs industry in mind. However, we found that Cinematographers and filmmakers didn’t like Maya. They liked Cinema 4D.

After many years of development in Maya we tried Cinema 4D and fell in love with its modern intuitive interface and most importantly it’s excellent native render engine. It is the best native render engine in our opinion, however Modo looks nice too. We acknowledge Mental Ray, but we do not ever plan to support it.

We could release a full Maya build today and we could develop releases for other GCCs/platforms in months. However, we believe that would split the community and ultimately slow progression of the Cine Designer platform. For the near future we do not plan on releasing for any other program simply to force the community to accept and work under one roof.

This plan may change but we would rather create one amazing solution for Cinema 4D, than 2 or 3 mediocre solutions for C4D, Maya, Max, Blender, etc. We understand the fear and pain of switching from Maya/Max to Cinema 4D, but it’s been worth it. We hope you will consider it if Cinematography Design is something that would benefit you or your company.